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The biography of the physicist and Nobel prize winner Richard P. Feynman - a collection …

Review of "Surely You're Joking, Mr.Feynman!" on 'Storygraph'

3 stars

I feel rather conflicted about this book. Listening to Feynman explaining things is fascinating and his enthusiasm really comes across, but whilst that remains in many of these anecdotes they're surrounded by misogynic behaviour and arrogance. He was obviously extremely passionate and put a huge amount of effort into things, but his constant downplaying of his skills early in an anecdote followed by people heaping praise on him was irritating, especially as it happened chapter after chapter after chapter. I think the book could've done with some more rigorous editing: fixing the anecdotes jumping around time, removing some of the more misogynistic sections and maybe replacing a few of the less interesting anecdotes with some of his wonderful explanations about physics.